Idealist Propaganda: The Raw Power of Glen E. Friedman

"Search and Destroy" funnels out onto the 10:30 p.m. Saturday Sunset Blvd. sidewalk, violently greeting late-arrivals to Glen E. Friedman's Idealist Propagandaexhibit. Iggy's cocaine cacophony carves up Tymphanic cavities. Like a pistol gripped power drill, James Williamson's guitar rattles the window panes of the poor saps staying at the Echo Park Super 8, adjacent to Shepard Fairey's Subliminal Projects gallery. Good luck trying to turn in early when confronted with the one-two assault of The Stooges, plus the 100+ Dewars-drunk art geeks serried into the small space--among the thousand-plus bold-faced names and miscellaneous, vivid characters that poured in during the three hour opening.

It's a sonic coincidence too appropriate to be apocryphal, not even for the most blocked journalist desperate for a lead. And not just because "Search and Destroy" donated the bricks for the punks to toss only a few years later---a movement that Friedman so poignantly captured with his seminal shots of Fugazi, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Suicidal Tendencies, et al. But because "Raw Power" is the most pithy phrase you could use to summarize the aesthetic strand running through all of the 46-year-old Friedman's collected works.